


it's getting hard to be someone, but it all works out

by redsquadronblues (clockworkcorvids)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: 5+1 Things, Asexual Luke Skywalker, Asexual Relationship, Asexual Wedge Antilles, Cuddling & Snuggling, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, Literal Sleeping Together, M/M, NOT sequel trilogy canon compliant sorry jar jar abrasion, POV Wedge Antilles, Red Squadron (Star Wars), Rogue Squadron (Star Wars), Slow Burn, for them but not for the readers, i only know the ot and legends, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-01-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:54:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22216621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockworkcorvids/pseuds/redsquadronblues
Summary: Wedge and Luke keep coming back to each other for ten long years, and it's the opposite of a problem.Or, five times Wedge wakes up next to Luke Skywalker, and one time he doesn't.
Relationships: Wedge Antilles & Luke Skywalker, Wedge Antilles & Wes Janson, Wedge Antilles/Luke Skywalker
Comments: 19
Kudos: 94





	it's getting hard to be someone, but it all works out

**Author's Note:**

> title from [strawberry fields forever](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtUH9z_Oey8) by the beatles

0 ABY

The first time Wedge Antilles wakes up next to Luke Skywalker is right after the battle of Yavin.

After the ceremony and the medals, when they’re all tired, the entire Rebellion, but can’t sleep; the survivors are all still shaking with adrenaline. He and Luke, they’re the only ones left from Red Squadron, and neither of them know who else to go to, who else can understand the pain they’re feeling right now, binding them together like the Force Luke hasn’t stopped talking about in the last few weeks. Everyone left is trailing around the base, stragglers trickling in from time to time, wounds patched up, and the whole thing has a sense of _rawness_ to it, skin scrubbed red to the point at which it breaks down, blood on the tongue, fresh bruises, the soreness that comes the morning after a long hard workout.

Wedge’s memory is hazy; he knows he went to medbay at some point, unconscious or maybe somewhere between that and awareness, but everything after the battle is a blur, with moments of terrifying, nauseatingly sharp clarity here and there. Shaky feet touching the concrete ground, knees giving out as he jumps out of his X-wing. A hand on his shoulder, warm, which he doesn’t know he’ll miss until the moment it’s gone. Shaking, everything is shaking, maybe the world and maybe just him, and the pain has to go somewhere, but it has nowhere to go, it doesn’t know where to go, so it just sort of sits and festers.

Wedge wanders the halls—aimlessly, without thought—until he reaches a door, and he looks up, and there’s Luke. And Luke, silently, unquestioning, lets him in (this is foreshadowing of the way Luke always has been in the short time they’ve known each other, and the way he always will be, especially when it comes to Wedge), and that’s all that really matters. 

They talk, and in the addled state of mind they share, a byproduct of trauma and shock as much as one of pure, raw, physical pain, Wedge forgets most of it. He thinks Luke does too. He doesn’t forget Luke’s smile, sad, hesitant at first, eventually melting into appreciation. Luke feels that festering pain too, Wedge can see it in his eyes, and that’s another one of the moments of clarity, looking into his sky-bright irises, clouded by the fear that, no matter how hard he tries, he can’t hide.

They talk long into the evening, long past when Wedge maybe should have let himself out, and it eventually blurs into the haziness of oncoming sleep.

Wedge has a nightmare that night, the first of many to come, and he’s had them before, but this is the start of something new, something horrible and jaw-clenching and fearsome. He forgets the contents of that as well (he’ll remember them after the next iteration of that nightmare, the night after, but for now his brain is blank and terrified and shaking, back in the cockpit, heart pumping), and then the comforting darkness of the quarters he’s in overtakes him, the moonlight seeping in from outside, the form curled up on the other side of the bed a respectable distance away but still close, still reaching out as if clutching at even the faintest source of hope. 

Hunched over, elbows on his knees, still shaking, Wedge looks sidelong at Luke, and he wonders if Luke can sense him in the Force. He doesn’t really know how it works (he will begin to understand, after enough time around Luke), but Luke is still out cold, and the beam of moonlight that gently falls over his face, along with a single lock of messy blond hair, shows a carefully neutral expression. 

He reaches out, suddenly, brows furrowing and lips turning downwards—is he having a nightmare?—shifting closer to Wedge in his sleep, one arm brushing against Wedge’s thigh, and Wedge wonders if he should pull away, but this isn’t so bad. And, well, Luke’s face has relaxed again, after making contact with Wedge. Maybe it’s that it’s Wedge, maybe it’s just that subconscious craving for comfort that he must be feeling right now (Wedge is sure as all hell feeling it), but Wedge doesn’t want to take it, that one little good thing in a spiraling hell of disasters and death and loss and pain, away from Luke.

They can talk in the morning.

Wedge forgets most of this internal monologue come the dawn, come the rosy sun peeking brightly in through the window, but Luke is still there, even though they both find themselves with some unspoken agreement, both say nothing and act as if this is not a change in their status quo ( _is_ it?) and both move swiftly, pained, heavy-hearted, into what comes after the initial shockwave of loss. 

The Rebellion will grow, and the fire will continue to burn, and Luke tells Wedge over breakfast that morning that he is growing in the Force, that his connection is strengthening. They dance around the losses, the wounds, the cleanup after the battle, what happened last night. Wedge asks, half joking, what he looks like in the Force, and his heart does barrel rolls and intricate loops at the way Luke tilts his head in response, pursing his lips and squinting slightly, genuinely thinking about it.

“You’re purple,” he says finally, “this deep sort of royal color, strong, determined, stubborn, but...I don’t know, is _warm_ the right word?” 

A pause.

“You feel _safe_ , that’s it. Safe,” he says finally, smiling earnestly in a way that makes Wedge feel, for just one fleeting breath, as if all his troubles have melted away and left him with nothing but this happiness. 

And then Luke blushes, looks down at the table, mumbles something about being sorry for being weird and mystical, “Hells, I sound like Ben”, and Wedge insists, truly, that it’s not weird at all, and really, he admires (he _adores_ ) the strange and fantastical way Luke sees not just the universe, but also what lies beneath the surface.

* * *

3 ABY

Three years isn’t enough time to get used to the bitter, inarticulable cold of Hoth. Three years _is_ enough for Rogue Squadron, the phoenix formed from the ashes of Red Squadron, to grow into a family of pilots. It’s enough for Wedge and Luke, co-commanders of the squad, to grow close, so close Wedge thinks they must have to merge into a single being, a single _thing_ at some point: Luke and Wedge, Wedge and Luke, the ones who crawled on hands and knees out of the shattered wreckage of the Death Star and plucked broken glass from their palms and, spitting blood, kept fighting. 

The whole squad are close, trusting each other with their lives and more, but everyone knows Wedge and Luke are the closest, and even if Wedge blushes and averts his eyes every time someone makes a joke about how they bicker like an old married couple or orbit each other like that binary star system the last recon mission passed through, he’s always the first to acknowledge it. 

Even when it’s awkward. Even when, after a long practice run in the X-wings followed by an even faster run on foot through the biting cold of an open hangar, Luke passes out in the rec room with his head on Wedge’s shoulder, and Wes puts down his mug of black caf and whiskey to raise an eyebrow at the pair. 

Wedge tries not to think about the heat rising in his face as he silently gestures at Wes to knock it off, giving his co-Lieutenant a slightly fearful look that is, to his disappointment, only met with a knowing smile from Wes as he picks up his mug again, taking a long sip. 

“Let him sleep,” Wedge hisses defensively, “he needs it!” 

Wes snorts into his mug, glancing back at Wedge one last time, but says nothing.

Luke, meanwhile, has shifted in his sleep, and is more or less splayed out over Wedge’s side now. While it was awkward at first, Wedge is glad he threw one arm over Luke’s shoulders when the Jedi was still awake, because otherwise he almost certainly wouldn’t be able to feel his arm right now. 

Not that he’s complaining. 

Although he’s still blushing, and smiling too, not just because of Wes’ amusing reaction. 

And it doesn’t feel wrong the way he would have expected it to, if he had been presented with this situation as a hypothetical. The way Luke always cares for everyone and everything, but _especially_ Wedge, the way Wedge cares in return, the way Luke is so casually tactile with all of his friends but more careful, more _lingering_ with Wedge. Maybe it’s just Wedge’s imagination, but still.

He doesn’t feel the urge to jolt and run away and cleanse himself of something hard to put into words but surely _wrong_ , as he had expected. He thinks he has trouble with attachment. He thinks he doesn’t want the same things from a relationship that most people would, and this doesn’t bother him so much as the realization that he might want a relationship with Luke, and he doesn’t know what Luke wants. Doesn’t know, if Luke feels the same, what he might want from Wedge. 

Once again, they don’t talk about it the next day, even though Wedge falls asleep on the couch where he sits, with Luke still at his side. 

Wedge doesn’t realize how much he misses that head on his shoulder until after the Battle of Hoth is over, when Luke doesn’t meet the rest of Rogue Squadron at the rendezvous point, and there’s no sign of his astromech or X-Wing either. To make things worse, while Han and Leia are apparently alright for the time being, they’re out in the middle of nowhere and have no idea what happened to him either.

He can’t be dead, not _Luke_ of all people, but Wedge has the feeling he might be something worse. 

He tries not to think about it, but the war continues, and Luke’s absence is a burning, gaping hole straight through the gap between Wedge’s fourth and fifth ribs. His nightmares continue, worse when they jolt him awake in the middle of the night than when they don’t (he can’t fly well if he’s sleep deprived, but he can at least try when he’s had a full night of sleep, no matter how plagued by terrors it was). The Battle of Yavin is joined by things cold and monstrous, hot blood splattering on snow, an X-Wing hurtling cometlike through faraway skies, a snowspeeder crushed by colossal mechanical legs, and he keeps clawing towards something just out of his reach, but it keeps disappearing.

Sometimes he finds it hard to breathe.

* * *

4 ABY

Luke comes back changed. Han is gone, and that seems to stress him out almost as much as it does Leia. He wears all black now, as if he’s in mourning, and he might just be. For what, Wedge doesn’t know, because he sees Luke, and not the other way around, when the Jedi returns. Luke will come to him when the time is right, and Wedge will be waiting. Luke will let Wedge in if he wants to, and if not? Wedge thinks he’ll be able to forgive that, though it might take him some time.

It’s the middle of the night when he knocks on the door to Wedge’s quarters. The nerves from everything that’s happened in the last few cycles, as well as the questionably healthy amount of caf he ingested between the time he found out that Luke’s X-Wing had been spotted on the radar and the time Luke actually showed up, are keeping Wedge wide awake. He knows it could, in theory, be anyone knocking on his door, but he also _knows_ , more certainly than he knows most things, that this is different. Perhaps it has something to do with the Force, but Wedge doesn’t dwell on that as he, still fully clothed, climbs out of bed and opens the door to find Luke in the hallway.

Luke has let him in before, so many times. The least Wedge can do is return the favor.

There’s a darkness in his eyes when he sits down at the foot of Wedge’s bed, the broadness to his shoulders that Wedge swears wasn’t there last time they saw each other giving him a slight air of confidence despite the way he folds in on himself. The dark circles under his eyes don’t help, nor does the sharpness of his cheeks that no doubt came from not eating enough, but even without those things it would be clear as the Tatooine sky that Luke is hurt. 

The bed sinks under them as Wedge sits down next to Luke, puts a hand on his shoulder, and he’s mildly surprised—though certainly not bothered—when Luke reaches up with one hand to pull him closer, pull Wedge’s arm around his shoulder. 

Wedge jolts, not from the proximity, but from the way that Luke’s hand feels different, and then from the realization that even now, after all this time, he remembers every callus of Luke’s palm and every protrusion of his knuckles.

“What happened to you?” Wedge says without thinking, and the silence between them snaps violently, swiftly, plunging them both into the abyss of cruel truths.

From there, it all spills out: Han’s disappearance, a new hand, a strange old Jedi Master, horrifying darkness just beyond comprehension, a city in the clouds. The story is strange, fantastical, disjointed—anything but linear—but Wedge somehow understands as much of it as he can. He doubts Luke understands it much better.

And finally, on the verge of tears, Luke tells him two world-shattering revelations: Darth Vader is his father, and he’s going to hand control of Rogue Squadron over to Wedge so he can focus on his training as a Jedi Knight.

It hurts, it really does, it opens old wounds and tears new ones for both of them, but Wedge has never been the selfish type, has never been one to put himself before those he love, or really to put himself before anything at all (except for the time he quite literally jumped in front of a younger trainee who was being beat by a supervisor at the Imperial Academy, securing himself a beating of his own for showing empathy, for showing _weakness_.)

Luke falters, clearly waiting for something, for Wedge to snap at him or push him away, to tell him to leave, but Wedge just takes his hand—the cybernetic one—and tells him what he thinks they both already know, but maybe both of them need to hear again anyways: that Luke’s blood doesn’t define him, that Wedge doesn’t need the Force to see that Luke is bright and safe and warm and kind and _good_ , that Wedge would be honored to lead the ragtag family of pilots they’ve patched together over the last few years, he’ll fight for the Rebellion no matter what. 

As long as Luke stays. 

This is the point at which Luke begins to cry. 

This is the point at which Wedge holds him a little closer.

This is the point at which everything snaps and spills out, once again, and this is the point at which Luke says the simple truth: he is afraid. So, so afraid.

A little fear is healthy, but too much can break a man. And Wedge sees Luke beginning to break, ready for one strong breeze to pull him apart, so he gathers up the pieces, and does his best to hold them together, but Wedge can only do so much. Only Luke can keep himself in one piece, both physically and emotionally.

Luke makes no promises; he doesn’t know if he can stay, some things are out of his hands, but he tells Wedge, with so much earnesty that Wedge can’t help but trust him, that he will always come back no matter what happens.

Wedge falls asleep with Luke’s head on his chest, arms around his ribcage, knees knocking gently against his own. The hole in his heart begins to seal up again.

He’s starting to wonder if a person can be home, if a heart can be a beacon.

He doesn’t have any nightmares that night.

* * *

4 ABY

In the aftermath, they don’t know who else to go to. It’s beautiful in a twisted, bloody sort of way, like they’re coming back to the same place they started in, so long ago, and history is repeating itself with a few choice modifications.

The war is over. 

The second Death Star has been destroyed.

There’s the adrenaline again, the shaking, the horrifying clarity of a brush with death coupled with the haziness of shock and new trauma, but it’s _over_. 

Wedge lands on Endor thinking, for a moment, that Luke Skywalker is dead. Some odd thing between a martyr and just a corpse. He’s always been stubborn, and he had told Wedge, in that last fleeting moment in the briefing room before they went their separate ways and everything went to all nine hells, that he might not come back.

Wedge had wanted to grab Luke by the shoulders, shake him until some sort of understanding got through that thick farmboy skull of his, tell him that he kriffing loved him so much it was going to break him if Luke didn’t come back.

But he wasn’t going to do that to Luke, not when Luke needs to be focused, now above all times, more than ever before in his life, when the fate of the literal galaxy is at stake. Wedge loves Luke, and he’s said it before, and he hopes to the Force he’ll be able to say it again, but that was the wrong time, so all he did was hold Luke as closely as he could, heart breaking at the way the Jedi buried his head in Wedge’s shoulder and clutched at the shoulders of his flight suit one last time. All he said was the same thing they always said in the Rebellion: _May the Force be with you._

_And also with you_ , Luke had said, and something unspoken had passed between the two of them as they broke apart: _You’re safe, I love you, Your blood does not define you._

They embrace once, briefly, when Luke returns, but he has business with Han and Leia, things to tie up, and Wedge is perfectly content to wait. He’s waited this long, and Luke has come back like he said he would, and that is enough. He can wait a little longer.

After all, he thinks, standing on a wooden walkway high above the celebration, echoes of the firelight burning imprints into his eyelids when he blinks, they have the rest of their lives in front of them. They may be scarred and aching and haunted, but they are young, and the worst has passed.

Luke finds him there, lost in thought, and lingers at arm’s length, hesitating, as if unsure whether anything has changed. Wedge can’t help but smile; if the months where Luke was a ghost didn’t change things, how could this?

Wedge doesn’t know just what to say, though, so he digs back into his memory, to that fateful day. 

“Red Five,” he says, and his voice cracks a little. He’s smiling, and it’s sad, but it’s _hopeful_. 

Luke inclines his head, eyes unreadable.

“Red Two,” he responds, and the pain in his voice is so raw, so fresh yet simultaneously ancient, that Wedge swears the old hole in his heart is opening up again.

They fall asleep pressed together, wrapped in a borrowed blanket, inside a borrowed hut, and for once in their lives, they aren’t running on borrowed time.

They both jolt awake to nightmares at some point, and they stay awake through the slow, steady rising of the sun over the unyielding trees and still-smoking debris of AT-STs, and for once, they actually talk about it. Not because it needs to be said, but because this is the thing that will carry them into the first day of the rest of their lives.

* * *

10 ABY

Rogue Squadron’s last mission, accompanied by honorary co-Commander Luke Antilles-Skywalker, takes place six years after the Battle of Endor. As far as missions go, if not for the fact that it’s their last mission, it wouldn’t be very memorable. To Wedge, the mission itself is not anywhere near as important as what it stands for: one last run with the old crew, the Rebels who are his family in fuel and fire and spirit, and the Rebel who is his family in all of the above, but also in the matching rings he and Wedge wear.

Although he never officially rejoined Rogue Squadron after the war, Luke has stayed by Wedge’s side since Endor, steadfast and unwavering, and he’s as good a pilot as he was during the war, although Wes likes to joke that his aim is only still true because of the Force.

The end of Rogue Squadron is, in some ways, a death, but it is not an unjust death. To Wedge, it doesn’t feel like his and Luke’s creation is being taken away before its time, but rather that he and Luke and all the others are moving on to the next phase in their respective lives. Rogue Squadron has had a good run, and even with all his nightmares, Wedge isn’t sleeping any worse for that knowledge.

If anything, he’s been sleeping better recently. Memories still haunt him, and Luke too, but no longer being part of an active war has given them both the time and space they need to begin the long and arduous process of healing.

One of the nicer things is waking up next to Luke every morning. Going to sleep next to him, too, because even with all the Jedi business he’s been taking care of in recent times, he still manages to come back to their shared quarters at a reasonable time almost every night.

If Luke was tactile before they officially got together, Wedge doesn’t even know what he is now. He’s not clingy, per se, and certainly no more than he used to be, but during the war there was always something holding him back, muffling his affection, preventing him from loving with the full force which he is capable of. Wedge understands this, because he had felt the same way too, in part because he was afraid Luke would want something from a relationship that he couldn’t give (as it turns out, Luke is asexual as well, and had feared the same; even if not, he would have respected Wedge nonetheless) and in part because it is exceedingly difficult to love when one knows that every day could be their last.

Nothing stops them now, though, and Wedge could not be happier, because there are very few things that set his heart alight with adoration more than when Luke holds him as if he is simultaneously an anchor and a lifeline and the most precious star in the galaxy, calls him _Love_ , and kisses him gently.

One night, he wakes up not because of Luke’s presence, but because of the man’s absence, the lack of his familiar warmth when Wedge, unconscious and halfway through an incomprehensible nightmare, reaches out for him.

Moonlight hits Wedge’s bare shoulders and the crumpled sheets and the worn floorboards and, as he looks up, Luke’s sitting form by the floor-to-ceiling window. He’s meditating, hair falling gently over his furrowed brows, expression otherwise serene save for that one little tell. 

Wedge watches him, elbows resting on his knees, and finds that he’s forgotten his nightmare already, the feeling remaining but the memories hazy.

The moon is full and bright tonight, and as Wedge watches Luke, the Jedi slowly pulls himself out of his meditative state, away from things only he can see, and back into reality. His eyes flutter open, and he smiles gently at Wedge.

Wedge smiles back, and considers swinging his legs over the side of the bed to join Luke, but he decides not to move. 

“Another nightmare?” he asks.

Luke’s shoulders rise and fall in a deep breath. He nods, and then fixes Wedge with a knowing look.

“You too?” 

It’s Wedge’s turn to sigh.

“I don’t think they’ll ever end, to be honest.”

Luke finally stands, slowly stretching out every limb, and the lightning scars that mar his bare torso and arms are illuminated by the moon. While lighter than a few years before, the scars have never really faded, and like the nightmares, they probably never will.

Perhaps nightmares and scars are just two different versions of the same thing. 

“No,” is Luke’s simple reply, and he and Wedge both know he’s referring to the both of them, “they won’t.”

A pause, the floorboards creaking lightly under his feet.

“But it doesn’t mean we have to give up.” Wedge says, shifting to let Luke slide back into bed with him.

“I can’t give up when I’ve come this far,” Luke says, and there’s his smirk again, that glint in his eyes that Wedge misses whenever he’s sad.

“Of course not,” Wedge agrees, slinging an arm around Luke’s shoulders, and his husband settles into his embrace the same way they’ve fallen asleep together countless nights before.

It’s how they fall asleep that night, and it’s how they’ll fall asleep for countless nights to come.

  
  



End file.
